Keyrock

I've always been taught that for French onion soup you specifically use Gruyere. You can, of course, substitute a different variety of Swiss cheese, if you like, especially since Gruyere tends to be pretty pricey, but I like to go all out on the rare occasion I make the dish, and Gruyere is so delicious.

I beat the first boss in Code Vein on my first try. The second boss took me 5 tries, but I got the job done. I've been experimenting a different setups of blood codes (classes) and weapons. Currently I'm most liking the Prometheus class and halberds, as far as weapons go. My previous favorite weapons were hammers. Halberds don't stagger enemies nearly as often as hammers, but they have tons of reach, swing faster, and drain less stamina. I like how certain special abilities can be inherited and used by other blood codes. There's a lot of depth to customizing your abilities to fit your play style, and a nearly overwhelming amount of stats.

Is that a giant cocoon over there? I smell boss fight!

Do you have Gruyere to make it authentic French onion soup?

I started playing Code Vein, the new action RPG from Bamco. The game can be described as post apocalyptic anime vampire Dark Souls. If you've played Souls' games then the gameplay will feel very familiar. Light attack, heavy attack, dodge, parry, backstab, manage your stamina, manage your estus flasks regeneration, when running low on resources decide whether to be safe and trek back to the nearest bonfire mistle, which will refill your health and healing and allow you to save, but also cause all enemies in the area to respawn, or chance it and trek further in hopes of finding another mistle or opening a shortcut. You know the drill. From what little of the story I've seen so far, something happened that destroyed the earth, I don't know whether it was a war or some manner of cataclysm. Most of the humans died, but introducing a parasite into the blood of the fallen brought them back to life with superhuman abilities and a thirst for blood. In the game they're called Revenants, because vampires was too on the nose, I guess? Anyway, you play a Revenant and there are these weird plants that grow essentially blood fruit, which can sate the thirst of the Revenants (so they don't have to feast on the precious few humans left), but these plants are in short supply and you are trying to find a way to make more grow so that there is enough blood fruit to go around for the Revenants. If Revenants go without blood for too long they go feral and become The Lost. Pretty fun so far. Combat feels good and the story has me interested.

Code Vein Really great character creator with an utterly absurd amount of customizations. Sadly, you can't make you character look old, nor bald, nor fat. Once I discovered that, I decided to go full anime aristocratic vampire. Boobs right off the bat. Yup, it's anime. We're off to a good start. Now all we need is a little girl of questionable age whose underwear is frequently on display, a pervy old man, a tall, effeminate looking villain and melodramatic teen angst. It wouldn't be a Japanese game without hilariously oversized weapons.

I'd feel a lot better about our chances if a certain State Farm spokesman wasn't playing.

I just killed Jesse Cox, Dodger, and Angry Joe in The Witcher 3. I had forgotten they were in the game, I do need to take a break from the game though. It's a great game, but Jesus H Christ it's long, and that's not even counting the expansions. I may just take the plunge and get Code Vein.

The good news is that Tyron Smith's injury isn't season ending, it's a high ankle sprain. He's listed as week to week, but he definitely won't be playing against the Packers on Sunday. With that in mind, I'm predicting Green Bay 24 - 3 Dallas.

Anyone here play Code Vein yet? I'm kinda interested in it and the early Proton DB data suggests it's already running well on Linux. It seems like a VERY anime Dark Souls.

Might be the single best track Daft Punk ever made, and not just because it's a tribute to one of the true legends & pioneers of electronica.

Looks like YAXC (Yet Another XCOM Clone). It promises to deliver "a gritty story for a mature audience", as opposed to the lighthearted story in the XCOM games. On the positive side, the game does feature an Asian lady flaunting generous amounts of cleavage, so there's that.

I've been failing to live up to my gimmick as of late, I blame The Witcher 3 (no point in posting screenies of that, I'm sure everyone has seen hundreds by now). I've been trying to make up for it by posting videos for upcoming indie games nobody else knows the names for.

Well, yeah, statistics can be misleading. For example, muh Boys' offensive statistics are HEAVILY skewed by the fact that we faced nearly no resistance in the first 3 weeks. First we faced a Giants team that is now 2-2, but in week 1 had one of the worst performances by a secondary I've ever seen. Our receivers were consistently so open during that game that it had me wondering if the G-Men were fielding the full 11 out there. Week 2 had us facing a Redskins team that can be summarized with this one gif: Week 3 we faced a Dolphins team that is actively trying to go 0-16. The first time our offense met a defense actually trying to stop us, we wilted like a piece of lettuce in the oven.

You know, for as much as I like The Witcher 3, and I do, the movement in the game can be infuriatingly inconsistent. Most of the time, if I'm jogging forward and I stop pressing up on my left stick Geralt takes 2 more steps forward and stops, which is fine, I don't expect him to completely stop instantly like he's a character in a NES 2D platformer. Once in a while, however, I'll be jogging forward and I'll stop pressing up, which is interpreted by the game as take 8 more steps forward. Then there is the fun times of trying to get on a boat from the dock. Most of the time it works as expected, you just walk off the dock right onto the boat. Once in a while, though, I can't just walk onto the boat because apparently Geralt can't lift his foot higher than 4 inches off the ground. This forces me to attempt to jump onto the boat, which, naturally, results in me diving over the boat and into the water. My favorite one, though, is when you make a small jump over some obstacle and upon landing Geralt decides the thing to do is to immediately go into a roll, despite the fact that I'm not pressing any controls. This is especially fun when you're up on a platform somewhere high enough that falling=death. I'm assuming that Geralt is still recovering from his rolling addiction in TW2 and sometimes he falls off the wagon.

A follow up to Hero-U? Looks more like a visual novel than a point & click. Hopefully it's good.

If muh Boys play like they did last night the Packers won't have to worry about us getting out to a big lead against them, since that would require our offense to actually be productive, something we were incapable of. If all we're able to muster against the league's 24th ranked defense is 10 points (3 of which were gifted to us via interception), I shudder to think what we'll do against the league's 10th ranked defense. If the Packers can kick 2 field goals they'll be all set.

Rough game for muh Boys. Outside of 1 touchdown drive, our offense did diddly squat all game. Quite frankly, the game should have been over much sooner than it was. The Saints offense moved the ball down the field consistently, they were just incapable of scoring touchdowns. Just a piss poor performance from Dallas and an injury (hopefully not serious) to Tyron Smith to boot.

I'm going through Skellige in The Witcher 3, still in Act 1. It's probably my favorite area of the game, either that or Novigrad. I kind of wish more of the main plot took place in Skellige and less took place on Velen. Velen is just so soul-crushingly dreary (purposely so), Skellige is way more fun to adventure in. Anyway, I'm staying faithful to Yennefer (sorry Triss)... in the main game, anyway (I'm all about hooking up with Shani once I get to the Hearts of Stone expansion) and I'm going to try to get a free North, something I failed to do in my first playthrough. The way I figure there are only 2 paths to a free North... and really only 1, The first path is However, that doesn't really lead to a free North, as far as I'm concerned, because So that only leaves one path, I think, which is I hate it because I'm pretty sure that means I'm doing a spellcaster build with medium armor and as many sign intensity upgrades as I can get. I'm getting fairly close to maxing out Yrden. It's not quite the God Mode that was maxed out Quen in TW2, but maxed out Yrden is pretty crazy. The regular trap slows enemies to a crawl and constantly drains them, and the alt form is just a ridiculous turret that murders everything. It's especially great for bringing down harpies, sirens, and other flyers. It pretty much renders the crossbow obsolete (except for underwater stuff). I'm probably also going to max or nearly max Axii.

What kind of connections do you have? If speed is a priority and you have a thunderbolt connection then I can recommend the Samsung Portable SSD X5. I have the 500GB variant and that drive is blazing fast, faster than most internal drives. It gets pretty warm when heavily used but not crazy hot and I've never noticed the temp impact performance.

No, it probably means one of the devs that is working on Encased RPG used to work at Larian and another dev used to work at Iron Tower. Anyway, this looks like every single crowdfunded RPG. It could be good, I hope it is. I don't touch early access, I have no intentions of paying to beta test somebody's game. As far as I'm concerned, Encased RPG is not out yet. I guess the nice thing about early access is that there are plenty of impatient suckers devoted enthusiasts out there that will buy this unfinished game and play it now, so by the time this game comes out for realsies, 3 years from now, or whatever, there will be plenty of data out there with which I can make an informed purchasing decision.

I wonder if Volo is celebrating the Danny Dimes Era or upset that the G-Men won without Eli? Either way, sucks about Saquon Barkley, that dude is spectacular and I hated seeing him get hurt. To switch gears, there was some atrocious play calling yesterday. The Bucs having the ball in chip shot game winning field goal range then PURPOSELY taking a delay of game penalty to move the ball back 5 yards when their next play was a kneel down to move the ball back another 2 yards and to center the ball on the field. But that doesn't even compare to the Browns running a draw on 4th & 9 when the game was still well within reach. I can't even wrap my head around that play call. That may be the single worst play call in the history of the NFL.